Alice Faye Duncan: Memphis, Martin and me

In preparing to write my story, I interviewed the pastor’s daughter, Dr. Almella Starks Umoja. She was a teenager in 1968. Almella was an eyewitness.

She marched with Dr. King when the protest turned into a Beale Street riot on March 28. Almella sang at strike rallies in a local choir. Her parents carried her to Mason Temple Church of God in Christ on April 3, that stormy night Dr. King surveyed his life from the mountaintop and preached his final sermon under the sound of pounding rain.

Lorraine Jackson, the character in my book, is not my life story. She is not Almella’s childhood biography. However, Almella’s details from 1968 give the character bone and breath. My having known Patterson, Redditt and Starks gives Lorraine a child’s voice that is akin to my younger self.